Weather Operations in the Transformation Era: Maxwell Paper No. 29

In “Weather Operations in the Transformation Era,” Col. John M. Lanicci USAF, takes a compelling look at future weather operations. His hypothesis is that a consolidated battlespace picture integrates both natural and man-made elements, which is totally consistent with USAF transformation efforts. He points out that the way ahead is easier said than done and offers several cogent reasons why the weather operations portion of information-in-warfare has not caught up with current USAF doctrine. One such example is our historical tendency to look at weather as a somewhat isolated, tactical problem. Significant advances in information technology and advent of effects-based operations are propelling the USAF weather community away from traditional, single-inject stand-up briefings towards continuously updated advice to war fighters at every step of campaign/mission planning and execution. This technological momentum will make it necessary to fundamentally change data collection, analysis, prediction, and product tailoring. The author outlines these changes in a concept called weather, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (WISR), a term first used by the Air Staff to describe the total integration of natural and man-made environments for predictive battlespace awareness (PBA). The WISR concept is based on substantially increasing the volume of weather data collected intheater by using the same airborne assets being proposed for PBA, persistent ISR, and time-critical targeting. It proposes the creation of a four-dimensional database that can be used to integrate the natural environment into the common operating picture. The WISR concept also advocates transmitting real-time weather information to the cockpit as a means to optimize the “kill chain” by allowing rapid redirecting of sorties based on continuously updated weather information.